This past weekend I traveled 8 hours north of Guayaquil to the small town of San Isidro in the province of Manabí. (Map) I was invited by two Peace Corps volunteers from my omnibus to help them with an HIV open house (casa abierta) in their small town.
Kasie, one of the volunteers who lives in Manabí worked alongside her youth group to put together the casa abierta and to prepare all the educational materials we would need to pass out to the public. I brought 30 rapid HIV tests from Guayaquil to use and to test patients in the local clinic. We set up a system with two rooms where patients could be tested for HIV. In one room a Ecuadorian doctor helped draw blood and used the ELISA hiv test, which takes 1 to 2 days for patients to receive results. In another room I set up my rapid HIV tests and did one on one consejería (hiv education) with each patient. The casa abierta also included a large tent with booths where the youth group and 4 other Peace Corps volunteers helped to educate the public and to promote the HIV test.
A poster created by the youth group for the open house
Another poster that explains the ways HIV is not transmitted
Kasie's host cousin holding a poster that says, "I have HIV, please hug me. I can't make you sick"
In a small town like San Isidro, the general public is not well educated on the basics of HIV (such the vias of HIV transmission and how to protect yourself against the virus). After a full day of doing HIV consejería it was clear to me that the residents of San Isidro had a much lower level of education on HIV than the patients that I work with in Guayaquil. In small, rural towns in Ecuador like San Isidro there is a lot of stigma surrounding the topic of HIV/ AIDS. In my experience I find that the younger generation, such as high school students, are much more educated than their parent’s generation. It was rewarding to watch Kasie’s youth group educating older members of their community.
All of the volunteers from the casa abierta (Peace Corps Volunteers and the youth group of San Isidro)
Overall the casa abierta was very successful!
On Saturday we took a 15 minute truck ride to the town of Santa Clara to climb down to a waterfall. Another reason why Ecuador is one of the most beautiful places that I have been in the world!!
A video of the view from the back of the truck:
9 de Octubre Waterfall
me underneath the waterfall
Me and three fellow Peace Corps Volunteers
